Q: Has any other area had luck in managing traffic with surge pricing for bridge tolls? The San Mateo Bridge is super congested between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. Perhaps a discounted rate for crossing before 6 a.m. might help manage traffic patterns. I hope I don’t have to get going that early on my commute, though.

Lisa Vasquez, Oakland

Like Mr. Roadshow’s Facebook page for more questions and answers about Bay Area roads, freeways and commuting.

A: Yes, and a good example is almost at your front door. The Bay Bridge began congestion pricing nine years ago. Drivers pay $7 for peak hours (5 a.m to 10 a.m., and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.) and $5 for all other weekday times.

The tally so far:

The 11.6 percent rate of growth in morning peak crossings at the Bay Bridge from 2010 through 2018 is the lowest of any of the Bay Area’s seven state-owned toll bridges, as is the 8.6 percent increase in total traffic during this time.

Bay Bridge crossings in the pre-5 a.m. hours are up a whopping 83 percent.

Crossings in the 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. peak actually dropped 5.5 percent. (The toll direction, westbound, is the reverse commute in the evening.)

Could this come to our other bridges? Probably not. The Bay Bridge corridor is unique in that there are so many other options for travel between the East Bay and San Francisco: BART, AC Transit and WestCAT Transbay buses, San Francisco Bay ferries, casual carpooling.

But the array of alternatives in the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge corridor is not nearly so great. Consequently, it would be a much harder lift to introduce congestion pricing there.

But changes are coming. Express Lanes are coming to Interstate 880, the Highway 92 approach to the bridge and Highway 101 on the Peninsula.

Then you’ll see open-road tolling (no more toll plazas!) at Richmond-San Rafael and Carquinez as early as end of 2021; other bridges in 2022 and 2023.

Westbound traffic across the San Mateo span between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. is up by about a third since 2010. These are tops in the region, followed by the Antioch and Dumbarton bridges, where morning peak volumes rose by about 31 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

Your best bet: Join a carpool. You’ll save time and money with a 50 percent discount at the toll plaza: $3 instead of $6.

Q: Why is it that some license tags have the full year spelled out, e.g. 2020, and some, like mine, only have the last two digits, e.g., 20?

A: DMV’s NOW self-service terminals and some business partners use one form (two digits); DMV uses the other (four digits). There are no plans to change this as the DMV says the current system works well.

Gary Richards has covered traffic and transportation in the Bay Area as Mr. Roadshow since 1992. Prior to that he was an assistant sports editor at the paper from 1984-1987. He started his journalism career as a sports editor in Iowa in 1975.